BYZANTINE ARCHETYPES IN PSALMIST TRADITION AND

IN ROMANIAN MUSICAL CREATION

Reader, Ph.D. ELENA CHIRCEV
Gheorghe Dima Music Academy Cluj-Napoca
Elena CHIRCEV, musicologist, Byzantinologist, reader at the Faculty of
Theory of the Gheorghe Dima Music Academy, Department of Musicology,
disciplines: Music Education Systems (first cycle/B.A. program), History and
Paleography of Byzantine Music and Vocal Didactic Repertoire (second
cycle/M.A. program). Ph.D. in Musicology since 1998, with a thesis in the field
of Byzantine music. Participation in national and international symposiums.
Numerous studies and articles published in professional journals. Books
published: Muzica romneasc de tradiie bizantin ntre neume i portative
(Romanian Music of Byzantine Tradition Between Neumes and Staves), vol. I, II
(2002). Radio producer for the "Renaterea" Radio Station since 1999.

Any attempt to approach the past of the Romanian musical culture always takes into
consideration its three main strands: the folklore, Byzantine music and Western art music, along
with the fact that Byzantine musical manuscripts are the most precious evidence of an age-long
history of the Romanian culture1. In its spectacular evolution during the last century, the Romanian
school of composition drew close to Byzantine music in its various forms, ...from rough
Byzantinism... to the prefiguration of a meta-Byzantine musical world... revealing, by molding
archetypes of Byzantine music and spirituality, its entire area of reflection, its universal
potentialities as composer Irinel Anghel noted, attempting a close survey of the Romanian
creation of the latter half of the 20th century2.
An intriguing question posed during the preparation of this symposium Can Byzantine
music be considered an archetype for the Romanian musical creation? has made us turn our
attention from the Byzantine neume manuscripts (which are more familiar to us) to the permanent
and universal models, the archetypal symbols that this music contains and then transmits to the
contemporary creations.
The answer we are attempting to give now can only be too short, if compared to the
complexity of the topic, and we believe that it must start from a reality that was epitomized by

Titus Moisescu, Prolegomene bizantine. Muzic bizantin n manuscrise i carte veche romneasc (Byzantine
Prolegomena. Byzantine Music in Manuscripts and old Romanian Books), Editura Muzical, Bucureti, 1985, p. 15.
2
Irinel Anghel, Orientri, direcii, curente ale muzicii romneti din a doua jumtate a secolului XX (Developments,
Ways and Trends in Romanian Music during the Second Half of the 20th Century), Editura Muzical, Bucureti, 1997
p.11.

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Byzantinologist Constantin Secar in the phrase: ... Byzantine music is not music!1. Otherwise
said, church hymns are, in terms of the function they fulfill, beyond the meaning assigned to the
term by Western musicology; ... they actually soar to the doxological heights of closeness to the
contemplation of the divinity. From this perspective, Byzantine music represents the highest form
of expression of holy Orthodox theology2. As part of the Orthodox cult, it is impregnated with the
symbolism of the order of the Holy Services, also functioning as symbolic representation, a
mystical and sacramental renewal of the history of Redemption.

1. Numbers
Setting priorities was not easy, but, since any music is based on sonorous relationships, we
first focused our attention on the world of numerical symbolism. We have selected only a few
examples numbers three, four, eight and nine, although there are others, too, which lead us to
Byzantine music (firstly, one see the monody, the ison; seven the number of the divine services
etc.).
Three. Number three, a fundamental number in all cultures, expressing intellectual and spiritual
order, wholeness and completeness, represents in Christianity the perfection of the oneness of
God. Thus, number four appeared in the cult practice as early as in the first Christian centuries, its
symbolism being invoked, for example, in the 5th century, to justify the time when the Divine
Liturgy should be celebrated and which could be no other than the Third Hour (9:00 A.M.): the
hour that bears the name of the Holy Trinity and that should be celebrated by performing the holy
work for the glory of God, the One in Three.3.
The Orthodox church year begins on September 1st, according to the tradition inherited
from the Old Law, and is divided into three great periods, all centered around the Easter holiday:
the pre-Easter period (called Triodion and including, in its ten weeks, the Holy Lent), the Easter
period (called Pentecostarion, consisting of eight weeks) and the post-Easter period (called
Octoechos). Their names come from the liturgical books used by church singers during those
periods, but one can easily notice that they also make reference to a certain number. The book of the
Triodion, for example, owes its name to certain poetic musical works that are specific to the period:
the triodes, an abbreviated form of canon, prevalent during the period of the Presimi4.
During the church services, number three occurs in various situations: there are ritual
gestures which are performed three times (censing, the sign of the cross, the threefold immersion of
1

Constantin Secar, Muzica bizantin doxologie i nlare spiritual (Byzantine Music - Doxology and Spiritual
Ascension), Editura Muzical, Bucureti, 2006, p. 5.
2
Idem, ibidem.
3
Matei Vlastare, cf. Preot profesor dr. Petre Vintilescu, Liturghierul explicat (The Liturgy Book Explained), Editura
Institutului Biblic i de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Romne, Bucureti, 1998, p. 159.
4
Presimi is the popular name of the Triodion.

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the infant in holy water, during the baptism ceremony etc.), ritual hymns and formulas repeated
three times. The office of the Liturgy is in its turn performed on the background of a dramatic
trilogy whose three distinct parts The Liturgy of Preparation, the Liturgy of the Catechumens and
the Liturgy of the Faithful succeed and interweave with one another in a unitary action, revolving
around the theme of the redemption of the world through the sacrifice of the Son of God. The
symbolic theme of the descent of God on Earth through his Son1 is emphasized and complemented
in the second part of the Divine Liturgy in a solemn hymnographic form, pointing out to the same
number three: the liturgical Trisagion. The name perpetuated in the Romanian bibliography alludes
to the Greek text, where the word (holy) is repeated three times, for each of the three qualities
of the unique God: Aghios o Theos, Aghios athanatos, Aghio ischiros, Eleison imas (Holy God,
holy Strong, holy Immortal, have mercy on us). As a very old Trinitarian hymn, used by all
Eastern Orthodox or unorthodox Churches and already generalized in the liturgical service of the
5th century, the trisagion is a confession in the faith that the eternal presence of God encompasses
the eternal presence of the Holy Trinity. The relevant literature insists on the mystical nature of the
Trisagion Hymn which symbolizes ... the union of the triumphant Church with the struggling one,
of the sky with the earth, of angels and saints with the humans, achieved through the coming of the
Son of God in the flesh upon the earth. It also suggests the mystical presence, or the unseen
participation of angel saints in the worship service by which, together with them, we magnify God2.
We rediscover the same number three in the process of creation of the liturgical repertoire.
Even the composition of the sacred hymns by the Holy Fathers, John Chrysostom, Cosmas Melodus
and John of Damascus is presented in a 16th century paper by Hieromonk Gabriel, as a three-stage
process: a) firstly, the melody was composed in a permanent relation with the sacred text
(metrophonia); b) then the music was notated in a manuscript; c) and thirdly, for a better and more
beautiful rendition, the cheironomia was included3.
The process of apprehension of the Byzantine chant also unfolds in three stages: parallage,
metrophonia (applying the syllables of the text with the corresponding intervals) and melos, the
last being, according to the Byzantine musical writings, the most difficult one to achieve, for the
melos is the real music.4
Four. Number four has an equally extensive symbolism. It is a sacred number in the Vedas, has a
determinant role in the thinking and philosophy of the North-American Indians, and is also present

Pr. prof. dr. Petre Vintilescu, op. cit., p. 180.

Petre Vintilescu, Liturghierul explicat (The Liturgical Book Explained), Editura Institutului Biblic i de Misiune al
Bisericii Ortodoxe Romne, Bucureti, 1980, p. 317.
3
Gabriel Ieormonahul, cf. Nicolae Gheorghi, Tradiia muzical a koinonicului duminical n perioada post-bizantin.
Morfologie Sintax Exighisis (Musical Tradition of the Sunday Koinonia in the Post-Byzantine Period. Morphology
Syntax Exighisis), Ph.D. thesis, mss., Bucureti, 2005, p. 134.
4
Nicolae Gheorghi, op. cit., p. 133.
2

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in cosmogony, initiation rituals, Platonic philosophy, Jungian thinking and... the list could well be
continued, for since almost prehistoric times, number 4 has been used to signify the solid, the
tangible, the sensible. The relationship between number four and the cross turns this number into an
unparalleled symbol of plenitude and universality, a totalizing symbol 1.
In the Christian cult, the liturgical day is divided into four Hours the First Hour, the Third
Hour, the Sixth Hour and the Ninth Hour similarly to the hours inherited by the Jews from the
Assyro-Babylonians. Considering the day as the interval between sunrise and sunset, the length of
an hour varies with the season. However, the division is related to the moment of the equinoxes, i.e.
the 12-hour interval between 6am and 6pm, with each Hour lasting three days. This old oriental
division was observed by the entire Christianity, the moments of the daily prayers being still
governed by these hours, whose names were perpetuated notwithstanding the fact that services are
no longer held right at the times indicated by their names.
It is thus only natural that number four the number of the Holy Cross and of the
Evangelists is also encountered in the musical realm, more exactly in the Byzantine modal
organization. Although the total number of the medieval Byzantine echoi is eight, the manuscript
theory and tradition divides them into two groups of four, called authentic and plagal echoi, a
classification that has been maintained up to the present day.
Eight. The Byzantine modal system naturally leads us to number eight, owing to its quality of being
the double of four. While present in many cultures, eight has become a sacred number, associated
with accomplishment, perfection and cosmic equilibrium. In Christianity, eight is the symbol of
Resurrection and Transfiguration, just as the eighth day heralds the eternity. We also encounter this
number in the organization of the Byzantine liturgical repertoire established by Saint John of
Damascus in the 8th century. The rich hymnographic production of the previous centuries was
systematized in the book entitled Octoechos, according to its melodic structure. In this case, eight
stands for perfection and suggests at the same time the mediation created by the sung prayer
between the earthly world and the heavenly one. The transformations undergone by Byzantine
music throughout its secular evolution did not affect the Octoechos developed during the first
Christian millennium, it being to this day the organization system of the melody belonging to the
Byzantine tradition, and therefore also of the Romanian Orthodox one. From the viewpoint of the
melodic substance accompanying the divine service throughout the liturgical year, number eight is
constantly present, for in liturgical practice each week is successively assigned one of the echoi, the
beginning of the cycle being marked by the Feast of the Resurrection and then followed by the first
echos.
1

Jean Chevalier, Alain Geerbrant, Dicionar de simboluri (Dictionary of Symbols), vol. 3, Editura Artemis, Bucureti,
1994, pp. 28-29.

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The octagon should also be mentioned in this context as a symbol related to number eight
and encountered in external manifestations of the cult. Thus, the baptismal font in which the priest
immerses the infant at baptism has an octagonal shape or is placed on an octagonal stand,
this form symbolizing the Resurrection, the entering into the new life acquired upon removal from
the holy water.
Nine. For the purpose of this presentation, number nine will be primarily associated with a
specifically Byzantine poetic-musical creation: the canon, a long poem consisting of nine odes,
comprising, in their turn, three to nine troparia (strophes) and composed according to strict rules.
Out of the symbolic meanings of number nine, we will first refer to that of announcing at once an
end and a beginning, birth and death, the end of a cycle and the commencement of another, all these
ideas being encountered in various cultures.
Integrated in the Matins service (the early service) throughout the entire year, the canon is
nevertheless an emblem of the Triodion period, owing to its wider use during this period in other
services like the Thursday Matins of the fifth week of the Great Lent, when the Canon of
Repentance of St. Andrew of Crete is sung in the entirety of its 250 strophes. For Orthodox
believers, the Triodion is a time of preparation, through fasting and prayer, for the great feast of
Resurrection, and of remembrance of the Savior's sacrifice through Passion and Crucifixion. As a
central axis of the entire church year, Christs Resurrection also marks the transition to a new stage,
which through His Ascension into heaven followed by the Descent of the Holy Spirit, led to the
foundation of the Christian Church. The nine odes of the canon suggest the passage from the time
of struggle against sin, to that of victory over sin and death, of Easter triumph and joy.
Also with reference to number nine, we note that the previously mentioned Trisagion is sung
three times during the ordinary liturgy and nine times during the hierarchical one1, according to the
number of the angelic orders.
Numerical symbols have a consistent presence in Byzantine music, but as this is not
intended to be an exhaustive approach thereof, we conclude the section dedicated to numbers with a
few short remarks. Numbers are also present in the denomination of certain systems of modal scale
construction: diphonia, triphonia, tetraphonia, indicating their construction by way of conjunct
addition of trichords, tetrachords or pentachords.
Also worth mentioning is that as early as since the beginnings of notation, diastematic
neumes represented the intervals through the use of the first prime numbers: 1, 2, 3 and 5 (i.e. the
intervals of a first, second, third and fifth). The evolution of the Byzantine monody, also reflected in
the diversification of the musical intervals, has not changed the situation, so that any simple or
compound interval is to this day generated by combining the neumes representing these intervals.
1

Hierarchical liturgy, i.e. held by or in the presence of a high church official.

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In the practice of church music, numbers one to eight also serve to identify and recognize
the Byzantine modes, the most frequent nomenclature being the numeral one used in the musical
manuscripts: protos, deuteros, tritos, tetartos, plagios protos, plagios deuteros etc., in Greek and the
first, second etc. echos, in Romanian. In the theoretical works, these terms are supplemented by the
toponymic ones borrowed from the theory of the ancient Greek modes Dorian, Phrygian etc.

2. Geometrical figures
Of all the geometrical figures, the one most relevantly related to Byzantine music is the
circle. Loaded with a rich symbolism and ranked among the foremost fundamental symbols1, with
an important contribution to Byzantine architecture (see the circular churches, the dome etc.), the
circle also lies at the basis of an important didactic method, with subtle connotations: the wheel of
the echoi. The integration of the Byzantine modes within a more general diagram belongs to
Ioannis Koukouzelis, the great reformer of Byzantine music of the 14th century. Koukouzelis called
his diagram The great circle of the musical wheel and used it to render the relationship between
the four authentic modes and the four plagal ones. The Byzantine manuscripts reproduce this
diagram under different forms in their summary propaedias2.
An example thereof is the wheel of the echoi from the Gr. ms. 867, fol 594r kept at the
Romanian Academy Library, a complex representation, with many elements, close to Koukouzeles
representation. There are, however, other simpler variants, with a single circle, on which only the
keys of the echoi are represented, or other more elaborate ones, containing the specific
mnemotechnical syllables (ananes, neanes, nana etc.), diastematic signs or short melodic formulae,
the Greek names of the echoi etc. In the didactic process, the assimilation of the concepts related to
the modal system was supplemented by the oral tradition, since the propaedias contain no
explanations of these diagrams. Starting from the symbolism of the circle, we can see today in the
"wheel of the echoi" the expression of the idea of perfection of the modal system on the one hand,
but also, on the other, the presence of the divine breath, without a beginning and without an end, in
the Byzantine musical creation, whose modal characteristics are synthesized in this diagram.
The tree. One of the richest and most widespread archetypes is the tree3, which has, according to
Mircea Eliade, at least seven main interpretations, among which that of symbol of the connection
between heaven and earth, thus being synonymous with the Axis mundi. Christianity has established
a connection between the tree of life and the tree of the cross. The great success that this archetype
enjoyed among the miniaturists and glass craftsmen of the 18th century may have been responsible
1

Jean Chevalier, Alain Geerbrant, Dicionar de simboluri (Dictionary of Symbols), op. cit., vol. 1, p. 294.
Propaedia theoretical part at the beginning of the medieval musical manuscripts belonging to the Anastasimatarion
category. In includes the enumeration of the different categories of neumes, echoi and their keys, apechemata
(intonation formulae of the Byzantine echoi) and, sometimes, short exercises for the learning of the neumes)
3
Jean Chevalier, Alain Geerbrant, Dicionar de simboluri (Dictionary of Symbols), op. cit., vol. 1, p. 124.
2

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for its inclusion in the propaedias of the Byzantine musical manuscripts, in order to represent the
Byzantine echoi. In the Romanian manuscripts, this representation appears under the title The
changes of the echoi into the form of the tree and was perpetuated until the early 19th century.
A diagram from Tehnologia tis mousikis by Apostolos Konsta of Chios, one of the
remarkable personalities of the late 18th and early 19th century Byzantine music, shows the tree
under a different representation, related this time to notation and to the difficult process of its
assimilation. Although it appears as a simple play on neumes, (since all the signs are neumes
belonging to the kokouzelian notation, used between the 15th and 8th centuries) whose result can
also be regarded as an anthropomorphous representation, this diagram, probably a good technique
for the memorization of neumes, is imbued with connotations. At its basis are the diastematic signs,
giving the simple melodic line used in the parallage, the first stage in music initiation. The fruit
of the tree are the signs belonging to the cheironomia category, the great hypostas of the medieval
period, the ones that fulfill the instruction and create the melos, whereas the crown of the tree is
completed by the terms written in letters, making reference to important chapters of the musical
theory.

3. The poetic-musical genres

We undertook this approach fearing that we might eventually fail to give an exhaustive
answer. It seems that the best we have managed so far is a brief account of some of the archetypes
that are common in Byzantine music and implicitly also in the Romanian tradition. However, ever
since the first centuries of its existence this music has in its turn generated models, patterns
therefore archetypes which have accompanied creation to the present day1.
Among these, an important place is held by the oldest Byzantine poetic-musical creations:
the troparion, the kontakion and the canon, which appeared successively in the 5th, 6th and 7th
centuries. The prolific creation of the masters-melodos of the first millennium was transmitted in
unaltered form through the medieval manuscripts, even after the fall of Constantinople, while also
permeating the Romanian space. Although the texts remained unchanged, the encoding of the ritual
books being completed by the end of the first millennium, the melodies have evolved and become
richer, while nevertheless remaining close to the original pattern. One of the most illustrative
examples in this respect is the Kontakion on the Nativity of Christ, The Virgin Today, created in
the 6th century by Romanos Melodos, whose name appears in the acrostic of its 24 stanzas. The
comparative study performed by priest Ioan D. Petrescu2, on a great number of manuscripts dating
1

We note that it is only since around the 6th century, during the time of Emperor Justinian, that we can speak of a
Byzantine music, separated from the common trunk of Christian music and having a distinct character of its own.
2
Ioan D. Petrescu, Condacul Naterii Domnului. Studiu de muzicologie comparat (Kontakion on the Nativity of
Christ. Comparative Musicology Study), Tipografia Ziarului Universul, Bucureti, 1940.

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from the 13th century (no older kontakions have been preserved) to the 18th century, reveals the
great resemblance of the modal construction. The melody was so well-known that in its 1713
manuscript, Filothei sin Agi Jipei only notated its text. Subjected to a further process of
Romanization along with the entire liturgical repertoire, the Kontakion of Romanos Melodos
appeared in the printed works of the 19th century, wherefrom it was taken by Paul Constantinescu
and remarkably adapted in the Byzantine Christmas Oratorio. More recently, we find the pattern
of the kontakion sublimed in an instrumental piece, Quartet for Saxophone Quartet Kontakion, in
which Gh. Firca explores instrumental correspondences with the vocal spirit of the hymnic
forms.1
Romanos Melodos Kontakion also illustrates, through its legendary appearance, another
aspect of the Byzantine creation: the quality of being revealed. Mark of Ephesus relates how, on the
night before Christmas, the Mother of God appeared to Romanos in a dream and handed him a
scroll which he ate, after which, the next day he went to the pulpit and sang the kontakion. This
quality is emphasized, in different ways, in the commentaries on other liturgical texts, too. Here is
an example from the Romanian manuscripts: in 1570, the copyist Oprea noted in the epilogue of an
octoechos that he had transcribed: This blessed book which is an osmoglasnik was written by our
Father among the saints, John of Damascus. Yet what he hath written came not from human
learnedness, but from a mind enlightened by the holy angels...
The so-called archetypal music seeks to recover ... these heavenly patterns based on
harmony, symmetry, proportion, purity, simplicity,2 observed Despina Petecel Theodoru, noting
further that Byzantinism was one of the paths followed by the Romanian composers of the 20th
century. The musical quotation, enabling the detection of all the sources used by Paul
Constantinescu in the preparation of his great vocal symphonic works, was avoided in the works of
the final decades of the last century, which tend to combine the archetypal values of the old
Byzantine language with the those of the contemporary language. Works with explicit titles like
Ison, Axion (tefan Niculescu), Phtora (Nicolae Brndu), Bizan dup Bizan (Byzantium after
Byzantium) (Theodor Grigoriu), Metabizantinirikon (Octavian Nemescu) or others, which do not
make a direct reference to the Byzantine source and have been recently analyzed by our
distinguished colleagues from Bucharest, Irinel Anghel and Valentina Sandu-Dediu, emphasize the
way in which it is present in the contemporary creation: ... as function, as ethos, as allusion, as
interference or as attempts to uncover the archetypes, the permanent universal models.

Irinel Anghel, p. 12.

Despina Petecel Theodoru, De la mimesis la arhetip. ncercare hermeneutic asupra ideii de Adevr n opera de art
(From Mimesis to Archetype. Hermeneutic Approach to the Idea of Truth in the Work of Art), Editura Muzical,
Bucureti, 2003, p. 110.
2

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We cannot conclude without at least noting that Byzantine archetypes are still used in the
contemporary creation of Byzantine tradition dedicated to cult practices (with neumatic notation
and all that it implies from a stylistic standpoint.) An exceptional musical example is the relatively
recent version of the hymn entitled Lumin lin (Gracious Light), used at Vespers, composed by
Archdeacon Dr. Sebastian Barbu Bucur. A christological and trinitarian hymn dating from the 2nd
or 3rd century, it used to be sung in olden times when the evening star appeared in the sky. Its
symbolism is an unmistakable reference to the Savior who had identified Himself as the Light of
the World1.

The musical example was presented at the symposium in a recording featuring the Byzantion ensemble (see
Byzantion, Vecernia Acopermntului Maicii Domnului, (Vesperal Liturgy for the Protection of the Mother of God),
vol. V, Melos Studio, Iai, track 6).

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